A blog about learning

A (massive) collaborative curriculum review…

How (and why?!) would we involve over a hundred teachers in a curriculum review? What could we hope to achieve? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a small focus group reviewing our PYP program of inquiry? How could we make this IB requirement into a meaningful learning exercise? How would we make it a valuable experience for all staff?

According to feedback from staff, we certainly achieved our goals last Monday, despite our reservations…

Inspiration:

Objectives:

To gain an overview of the big picture of the whole school Program of Inquiry and see how it works.

To interact with different people, across campuses, across disciplines, and engage in educational dialogue.

To share observations and questions that might assist in tightening the Program of Inquiry.

Group roles: (A choice of the following)

Facilitator – Facilitate the discussion, making sure everyone in the group has a voice.

Hi Edna! My name is Taryn and I am going into my second year as PYP Coordinator at my school. I love this collaborative curriculum review and think it would be amazing to do with the PYP teachers I work with, but I have a question about timing. We have our PYP re-authorization scheduled for March 2017, so I am wondering if you would recommend waiting and doing this activity as part of our 12 month self-study leading up to our visit, or do you think it would be relevant (and not redundant) to do now before we start our self-study? Thanks for your advice!

Thanks for the comments.
Taryn, I would suggest doing it now. The more ways you find for the staff to think about learning and teaching practice between now and the evaluation visit (and always!) the better. This is what we did in the build up to ours: https://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/tag/ib-self-study/
In the end, I didn’t care much for the visit itself. It’s the collaborative process of exploration along the way that makes it worthwhile.